Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Arise and Write

Lew Welch is credited with having remarked that one doesn't write unless they're not good at anything else, a sentiment describing writing more as process rather than discovery. The myth of writing, that of determining truths, set in place, that will not diminish, change, or expand upon our writerly consideration of a set amount of data, can frustrate one who wants to nail their reality into neatly arranged contexts, like suits in a closet.

This poem under here, is what we do after we've survived our hubris and accept existence as something that is in flux, changeable, subjective in localized meanings, a phenomenon that will always vanquish expectations, and how we re-define our reasons for taking pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). It's similiar to shrugging off the disspointments and disgust with the failure of oneself to conquer the world and continuing with what one has been doing, which is to say that one returns to living ,but with an increased degree of involvement; less of figuring out the world and more of figuring out how to live in it.For all the benefits we claim for poetry--spiritual uplift, blunt truth telling, political anaysis, reconfiguring the language--I tend to think that poetry, above all, is a practice that keeps us focused on what's in front of us, what's actually in front of us.

All the qualities are there--irony, wit, enlarged emotion--but what's pertinent in the matter is that is a form that helps us admit that we may not know what life is all about, but we can at least know it's changing shape and appreciate the bends and turns of each odd nuance.

Arise and Write

Every which way butinto the sleeve of the jacketnow too long and longingas the armdrops toward the dressing room floor,one leg longer than the otherand pants a size too small,it seems you were invadedand raided and all the fadedjeans and things that arewhat you require for work, lunch,

all the points between appointments of blue pencil marks, remarks in red pen

displaced, asea in unknown pocketsin a pile of pants and shirtsunwashed like mythical massesarriving at the docksafter passing under the grey lady’s armpitand the light she carries, home fires for everyone,

Nothing makes sensebut that doesn’t matterwhen work is the word of the dayand the word is firstwhen you thirst for a drinkand think you have no dimesnor quarters for the soda in a canor water in a plastic bottle,

you just hit the throttle andplunge ahead into the brand new dayfull of traps and fortunesand the terroran angry typist can bring you

or an empty pagetaunts you with,you rise, you shave, youput on your cleanest dirty shirt,you move on,the streetlights are still on,